Rachel Ferguson’s A Footman for the Peacock: a hatchet job

There is a good novel buried in this sprawling, self-indulgent fantasy of irony and class consciousness. Rachel Ferguson wrote A Footman for the Peacock (1940) right at the beginning of the Second World War: it was her eighth novel and fourteenth book. Comparing it to its immediate predecessor, Alas Poor Lady (1937), one can only assume … Continue reading Rachel Ferguson’s A Footman for the Peacock: a hatchet job →

Now posting on Vulpes Libris: Frank Fraser Darling’s Island Years, Island Farm

Over on Vulpes Libris I've posted a review of the Little Toller reprint of Frank Fraser Darling's two books on living in the Scottish Highlands and Islands for several years in the 1930s and 1940s, Island Years, Island Farm. He and his wife and young son lived in tents and wooden huts on uninhabited islands, rebuilt … Continue reading Now posting on Vulpes Libris: Frank Fraser Darling’s Island Years, Island Farm →

Tove Jansson and the Moomins

Today’s letter is J in the Why I Really Like This Book podcast recap, and today’s author is Tove Jansson, the Finnish-Swedish artist and writer who died in 2001. She is most famous in Britain (I don’t know about other countries) for her children’s books and cartoon strips about the Moomins, which started to appear … Continue reading Tove Jansson and the Moomins →

Now posting on Vulpes Libris: Jenny Erpenbeck, The End of Days

I read a delicate, poetic, gripping and depressing novel about German lives during the persecution of the Jews before and after the First World War, the starvation of the German population between the wars, and the appalling administrative tortures of Stalinism, and reviewed it over on Vulpes Libris. Yes, I didn't like The End of … Continue reading Now posting on Vulpes Libris: Jenny Erpenbeck, The End of Days →